An Astronaut’s Guide To Activity Professional Training

How long does it take to get to the International Space Station (ISS) and back?  “The trip takes a lifetime,” according to Col. Chris Hadfield.  In his book, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life On Earth, Hadfield describes what we call the "right stuff" looks like, feels like and costs.  The cost part is something he wants us to reframe.  You could say the cost included time spent behind the scenes in endless training, filling other ground-based jobs, helping other astronauts be successful, and marketing space exploration to the world.  He looks at it differently.

To Hadfield, training and experience are always good, even if you don’t use them directly. He was always signing up for extra training opportunities or teaching himself.  If he got to use his robotics training to install a giant robotic arm on the ISS, that was great.  If he learned to actually pilot the Soyuz capsule, but in the end, only got to go along for the ride, it was great because he got to understand the process better.   If he taught himself “Rocket Man” on the guitar, hoping that Eton John would invite him onstage for a duet, and Elton didn’t, well, Hadfield would still know how to play “Rocket Man” on the guitar.  It still made him a better astronaut and more interesting human being.  In the activity profession, we have lots of opportunities for extra training in things like dementia care, use of technology, horticulture, public speaking or event planning.  Some of this we’ll put into practice.  Yay!  Some will be back-shelved.  But all training increases the depth of our competence as activity professionals.

In a sense, everybody hopes to find the perfect job and stay there forever.  However, moving to a new job, a new facility, or a different level of responsibility can be good for your professional development.  That includes moves that are not necessarily upward.  Hadfield worked many different jobs over the years:  test pilot, astronaut trainee, ISS Operations in Houston, capsule communicator, NASA Operations at Star City in Russia, NASA robotics, and, of course, sitting on committees.  Most of those jobs could not hope to match the apparent glamour of astronaut in orbit, astronaut spacewalker, and astronaut just back from space.  But, they gave him a better big picture perspective and made him more useful no matter where he was.  I used to be a teacher.  However, when I switched to healthcare, I started out as a CNA and then dropped to merely NA.   I sat with groups of residents at high risk for falls, raced around the building delivering ice, accompanied residents in the van to outside appointments, and ran the dining room on weekends.  Was this useful experience once I joined the activity department?  Oh, yeah.

 ©  Donna Stuart, ADC    January 29, 2017

Hadfield, Chris. An Astronaut's Guide To Life On Earth. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2013.